In article <dln1n3$glk$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
"Steven T. Hatton" <hattons at globalsymmetry.com> wrote:
> do not tend to read them. I much prefer having books in hardcopy. Having
> the electronic form, especially if they consist of Mathematica notebooks is
> certainly valuable, but does not replace the functionality of traditional
> books with paper pages.
>
> What do others think about this?
>
Absolutely agree! If it's a book, a manual, or some other document that
I want to thumb through, flip from page to page, read bits here and
then, scan text quickly, put sticky tabs to mark pages, scribble written
notes on pages -- and do it in comfort and convenience, not trapped at
my desk -- then an electronic version is just NOT SATISFACTORY!! (even
with laptops, Airport wireless all through my house, and so on [1]).
On the other hand, nothing replaces doing a full-text electronic search
through a long electronic document or manual looking for some term; or
the ease of having color or animations. And nothing can be immediately
and continuously updated the way an electronic document can.
The ideal is to have a paper copy, *and* an electronic version at hand,
with the latter containing tons of supplemental material, updates, and
search capability.
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[1] With a laptop now being not just my primary but my one and only
computer, and Airport throughout my house, I personally do a lot of
"away from my desk" computing all over the house -- but I'm still always
nervous about dropping it, spilling coffee in it, dog knocks it off the
couch, etc.